RE: Space pointers

Comments inline.

From: Njål Fisketjøn [mailto:n.f@figu.no]

Jim Langston wrote:

>> I could think of a few uses.
>>
>> 1. I have a buffer I am using that, currently, is 1000 bytes.
>> I've used up
>> 500 bytes so far.  I want to add an element that's 600 bytes.  Rather
than
>> add 100 bytes to the end, re-allocate 600 bytes from byte 501.
>
>What's the difference? Don't you get bytes 501 to 1100 either way?

Yep, you sure do.  But it would be more intuitive, and hence less error
prone, to make a call requesting the number of bytes I actually needed then
doing the math in my code to figure it out.

CallP AddAllocate(MyPointer: UsedSize: %size(RecordToAdd))
makes for a nice call.

>> 2. I have a buffer of records that are 100 bytes each, and I have
>> 10 so far,
>> for 1000 bytes.  I want to add a record into the middle.  Rather than add
>> the 100 bytes at the end and shift the records from 5 to 10 to the next
>> record, just add 100 bytes in the middle.
>
>> 3. I want to delete a record in the middle as the above scenario.
>
>Wouldn't user indexes be faster for this type of application?

I'm sure there'd be lots of things faster, but with the increased speed of
computers, more people are coding for ease of maintainability and speed of
programming more than speed of execution.

Again, I'm not the one doing this, but I can see why he's doing it.  I've
written my own malloc wrappers before for various projects in other
languages.

Regards,

Jim Langston